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How often do you here a company’s sales team bemoan the fact that there are far more hot new product development opportunities than there are in-house engineering resources to support them. If you’re like most companies designing electronic products these days, this is a constant refrain....

Harsh environments complicate the choice of power management system, especially if a wireless device is to be deployed in a remote, inaccessible location. When reliable, long-term power is required, and battery replacement or recharging are not viable options, lithium chemistry is preferred due to its intrinsic negative potential....

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) was originally launched in 2002 to replace the aging and bulky SCART connection or RCA cabling. Since then, more than 2 billion HDMI-enabled device have shipped and HDMI technology has extended into an increasingly wide array of devices....

Recently, the technology industry has been abuzz with talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), a term used to describe an ecosystem of consumer electronics and appliances that have the ability to connect to the network and communicate with one another....

At EDS 2014, Dale Ford, vice president of IHS Technology, offered some eye-opening predictions, particularly for the consumer electronics market, in his presentation, “The Big Picture, Ideas, and Opportunities.” “We’re going through dramatic change, and that change is accelerating from being an intelligent device to being a networked device – and it’s generating a lot of data,” says Ford....

Prices have been falling dramatically for LEDs. As recently as two years ago, a 60W consumer LED bulb cost between $40 and $50, but today buyers can find them for as little as $13. The dramatic decrease in prices is due to several factors — some related to technological advances in LED design....

Today’s microprocessor-based electronics can be found in just about everything in the home. Inside the dishwasher, stove, refrigerator, television, telephone and a myriad of other devices including home computers. Shortly after the introduction of home computers, the demand for low cost uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) significantly increased....

Space research isn’t just for the big space agencies anymore. In fact, anyone wishing to make observations from space should not only think small but also inside-the-box. Or more accurately, inside the cube. That’s because in recent years academia has been creating and deploying very small satellites called CubeSats....

Solar micro inverters are an emerging segment of the solar power industry. Rather than linking all solar panels in a solar installation through a central inverter, solar micro inverter systems instead place smaller, or “micro,” inverters in line with each individual solar panel....

Industry leaders predict that the number of connected devices for the Internet of Things (IoT) will surpass 15 billion nodes by 2015 and top 50 billion by 2020. Most of these connected devices will not be traditional PCs or even smartphones but smaller, less expensive, simpler ultra-low-power embedded systems....

I blame the smart phones! Everyone now expects to see “smartphone-like” user interfaces in everything that has a display. Coffee makers, security systems and thermostat panels are just a few of the examples where you will see integrated colored screens....

There will be significant opportunities available to the embedded MCU market in 2014, specifically for 40nm MCUs targeting Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Thanks to their high performance, low-power consumption, abundant on-chip memory and peripheral resources ...

As far as products are concerned, all design engineers are under pressure to create solutions that are smaller, more powerful, and can operate faster. In a way these three elements are the perfect storm relative to all of the thermal management issues engineers need to work through....

In one sense, technological advancement is about enabling people to take things for granted. Imagine you’re driving at 80 mph on a highway and the car immediately ahead stops suddenly. Instinctively your foot goes to the brake pedal, and your car transmits the force from your foot to the brakes through fluid or brake oil....